The Irrelevance of Terms: Formal and Informal Education

My first teaching position was teaching 5th and 6th grade Judaic studies at a Jewish day school in Dallas, Texas. I began immediately upon graduating from college, though I had never taken a formal education course. In a group of first-year teachers, I would have been the novice amongst everybody else. One day during this first year, I was speaking to the school principal about a lesson that I was going to teach that day and he suggested that I begin the class by asking students to write silently for ten minutes. I looked at him and said, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I asked the students to write yesterday.” I asked, “Are you sure that’s okay?” I was intimidated about making the class too much work for the students. He responded, “Of course, it’s okay. This IS school.” 

It was almost as if I was afraid of overtaxing my students. Perhaps I feared that my 5th and 6th graders would rebel if I asked them to do too much. Significantly, in 1992 there was no published material for teaching Jewish studies at a liberal day school. Essentially, I developed the curriculum myself, on a daily basis. 

Twenty five years later, as I reflect on my reluctance to implement a writing activity, this memory makes me think about the relationship between formal and informal education. The common thought is that informal education is supposed to be fun and formal education is supposed to be rigorous. A scavenger hunt would be informal while a research report would be formal. Writing, would of course, be formal, a sing down, informal. 

Over the course of my career I have had the opportunity to teach in both formal and informal educational settings: K12, higher education, camps, youth groups. One thing has become clear to me - the best informal educators incorporate aspects of formal education into their teaching and the best formal educators incorporate aspects of informal education into their teaching. So, this is a false dichotomy. 

These two terms, formal and informal education, should become irrelevant. The important questions should be: 

1. What objective should students fulfill? 
2. What is the most effective way to help students fulfill this objective? 

Answering these two questions will effectively prescribe the types of activities that should be used in the learning process. Educational publishers must understand this because they should seek to develop the highest quality learning resources. Consequently, these two questions can smartly guide the work of educational publishers. 

A reflection on these two questions will help content developers understand why these two terms should become obsolete. 

What objective should students learn? 

An learning objective is a lot like a street address that one enters into a GPS. It states what the end point of the learning is but does not explain how to get to this end point. Just as one must know the final address to productively use a GPS, one must also know what they want students to know or be able to do after the learning activity. Without this knowledge there is really no point in having a learning activity. Furthermore, students should be given the courtesy of being told what they should be learning and why they should learn it. If there is not a good reason to learn something then there is no point in learning it. 

While these two points may seem obvious, it’s truly incredible how many educational resources fail to answer these two questions, particularly the second. While it’s important for the student to know the answers to these two questions, it’s even more important for the teacher and the curriculum developer to know these two answers. For, without these two answers, they cannot develop the highest quality learning path. 

What is the most effective way to help students fulfill this objective? 

Imagine a GPS specifying a particular route without knowing the final destination. That would be ludicrous. But, the GPS can specify the fastest and most efficient route once it knows the destination. Of course, it is far more difficult to develop an appropriate learning pathway than it is to identify street directions. However, once content developers know the learning objective they can develop the best path for students to achieve the objective. 

In order to best develop this learning path, content developers must ask themselves a primary question - What is the most effective way to enable learners to master this objective? As any classroom teacher knows, students are more likely to master an objective if they are engaged in the learning. The best content developers remember that most students are less likely to learn something by listening or reading than they are by doing. Can you imagine teaching somebody to hit a ball by only telling them what to do or to master a specific step in dance by having them read something? That would be ludicrous. 

Students might become more engaged in reading or listening if there was a game around these activities. For example, during a lecture, having students listen for which substantive words the teacher repeats the most often and why? During a reading activity, have students select the most important word that occurs in the paragraph. Then hold a quick trial in which groups of students have to defend their choices and convince a small jury of other students why their word is the best selection. 

Or consider an activity that challenges students to write an essay on a particular topic. Essentially students write essays to hone their writing and thinking skills. Instead of limiting the work to an essay, a lesson could challenge students to write an essay designed to be a script on a radio show and then actually give the students an opportunity to create the show. 

Once publishers and content developers provide educators with engaging activities to use within their teaching such as games and radio shows, there is a blur between formal and informal learning. The only thing that matters is that students are engaged in their learning and mastering the objectives. After all, walk around a typical summer camp and you’ll see games all over the place and many camps have radio shows that campers love to run. Of course the list of activities that could function well within both formal and informal settings is endless. The most important thing is that learners become engaged and master the objectives. 

Educational publishers must remember that it is their responsibility to develop educational resources that best enable teachers and learners to both teach and learn for fulfillment of educational objectives. 

Conclusion: 

Twenty five years ago, my school principal told me that it was absolutely acceptable for me to use a writing activity with my students two days in a row. This might have been accurate. However, in reality, we should have discussed the issue a bit more deeply. We should have first ensured that I had a clear objective. Then we should have discussed the activity that would have most engaged learners in the topic under study and allowed them to fulfill the objective. It would not have mattered if this activity was more formal or informal as long as it enabled the students to fulfill the objective as efficiently as possible.

Andrew Pass is the Founder and CEO of A Pass Educational Group, LLC. A Pass partners with organizations to develop customized educational content, including online courses. A Pass actively listens to client needs, specifications, and objectives and then develops the right collaborative team to bring their content vision to life.